The goal of this proposed research is to develop and understand a new, very rapid, and highly efficient method for identifying and characterizing bacteria and other microorganisms. This type of analysis could be performed in minutes to seconds rather than the hours to days time-scale currently needed. Several microbes could be analyzed, characterized, and quantitated simultaneously. This is not possible with any current approach, or even combinations of approaches. Furthermore, since the proposed project is based on a separations technique, it is not as vulnerable to false positive and false negative results caused by the presence of contaminants. This has important implications for: a) the rapid and accurate diagnosis of some diseases, b) rapidly screening cell-molecule interactions as a way to identify new drugs, and c) rapidly characterizing microbes for biotech applications or bioterrorism identification. Understanding the mechanism of this important microbial separation process is imperative if we are to be able to develop and use it optimally. [unreadable] [unreadable]